In other words, all the gobbledygook collection from 3e, slightly rehashed? What for?

MODERATOR NOTE (by Big Mac): There are multiple issues with this post, which is why it and the posts with it have been put into The Black Pudding:

When you write "What for?" like this, it reads very much you are demanding that Birchbeer provides "burden of proof" about why these 3e elements should be included in a 5e book. He has no obligation to do this. If you think that a mechanic should not be in 5e, it is up to you to explain why. You do have some sort of right to sit in threads and demand explanations from other people.

The other posters are attempting to assist Seethyr discuss his topic, while you are mostly ranting about how bad 3e psionics are and how bad 5e psionics are going to be. While it is acceptable for you to dislike mechanics from 3rd Edition, or any other edition, this borders on badwrongfun logic.

This post is also pretty snarky. Please do not address Birchbeer or any other member of The Piazza in an agressive manner. If you want someone to explain their point of view ask nicely.

And, as a general note - adding a laughing smiley to the end of your posts does not negate the need to be polite to other forum members.

In other words, all the gobbledygook collection from 3e, slightly rehashed? What for?

For people who choose to play that type of character. I ran a psychic warrior for a while and had a blast with it...well until it got it's brain ripped out of its head trying after trying to steal Psionic secrets from an ulitharid who systematically wiped the floor with him.

TBeholder wrote:In other words, all the gobbledygook collection from 3e, slightly rehashed? What for?

For people who choose to play that type of character.

Ahhh... but is there such "type of character"? Or is it just a pile of meaningless gimmicks?
For example, in which novels such things appeared?
Conversely, things that make enough sense on their own to be in novels and which can be (and occasionally was) reasonably well put into game terms.
E.g. several traditions from Thieves World turned out impossible to express in terms of 3e "Complete Half-Illithid" book. And Green Ronin chose to make custom classes rather than use the unusable. But they are obviously easy to translate into 2e model... "for some reason".

In other words, all the gobbledygook collection from 3e, slightly rehashed? What for?

What do you mean by "gobbledygook collection?" I don't follow.

TBeholder wrote:

Seethyr wrote:

TBeholder wrote:In other words, all the gobbledygook collection from 3e, slightly rehashed? What for?

For people who choose to play that type of character.

Ahhh... but is there such "type of character"? Or is it just a pile of meaningless gimmicks?
For example, in which novels such things appeared?
Conversely, things that make enough sense on their own to be in novels and which can be (and occasionally was) reasonably well put into game terms.
E.g. several traditions from Thieves World turned out impossible to express in terms of 3e "Complete Half-Illithid" book. And Green Ronin chose to make custom classes rather than use the unusable. But they are obviously easy to translate into 2e model... "for some reason".

I am not totally certain I'm following what you're saying, so pardon if my commentary is off.

Psionics have, unfortunately, not seen widespread support in novels. It's kind of a "taboo" subject. Likewise, novels are not always written with rules in mind. Oftentimes, when they are, they aren't as good as just regular prose.

I suspect that psionics in 5e will have a slightly different presentation. In 2e, psionics was a different power source. Same with 4e, though the mechanics resembled the other classes. 3e could go both ways. And who knows, maybe 5e's modularity will allow for both ways. However, I suspect that they'll say that psionics is mind magic, since D&D is a fantasy game.

Really, the direction I would like to see this thread follow would be that of constructive ways of incorporating psionics in 5e.

Dragonhelm wrote:What do you mean by "gobbledygook collection?" I don't follow.

That it's full of derp, and the ridiculous WikiKinderGarden of invented words (yes, that got into 4e) underscores this. Not that the rest of terminology was less facepalm-worthy. "Astral construct" thingies that got nothing to do with how-planes-work as we know them in everywhere else, even in the indecisively mumbling 3e form, random new-agey stuff like "autohypnosis", scurrying crystals and so on. In short, loonie stuff that is mostly unusable in any setting that isn't made for it, and - surprise! - ends up not used, or at very least thoroughly overhauled.

Dragonhelm wrote:I am not totally certain I'm following what you're saying, so pardon if my commentary is off.
Psionics have, unfortunately, not seen widespread support in novels. It's kind of a "taboo" subject.

3e stuff? Of course. Because material from the Book of Loonie cannot be used anywhere decent without thorough overhaul - and then, why bother?..

Dragonhelm wrote: Likewise, novels are not always written with rules in mind. Oftentimes, when they are, they aren't as good as just regular prose.

Exactly. And this stuff is completely unusable for anything that isn't written specifically for it. While everything else can be adapted, more or less. Which demonstrates that it's a pile of game gimmicks, rather than tools fit to build a model for any setting.
Again, the Thieves World is a good litmus test. It was adapted into AD&D, and into d20. The latter was very detailed, and... Magic was used with a few changes - but not something unrecognizable made from scratch, just extra rules that changed the basics of how it's used. But it didn't use psionics from d20 despite novels having at least 3 different traditions (Bandaran, S'danzo and savages), all of which are obviously distinct from spellcasting and would be easy to build as AD&D2 / "The Will and the Way" era kits. Specifically because that system was made for flexibility and doesn't sit on a cartload of arbitrary loonie elements.

Dragonhelm wrote: However, I suspect that they'll say that psionics is mind magic, since D&D is a fantasy game.

That's strange. In 2e it wasn't, and it was more a fantasy game than MMORPG.
Another problem is that "it's one more magic" ends up answered with "then why bother?".
The corollary is - trying to build it on concepts of 2e and make sense would go against the flow: one's own power got to be more flexible and less blatant than external power, while 3e trend is "everything is the same" ("everything is 1d6" and "give everyone some sort of familiar" are part of this), and looking for H&S first (what happened to cantrips in 3e vs 2e variants shows the different approach).